Student Academic Growth

Video Overview

Note: The 2015 PARCC assessment scores set a new baseline. Growth metrics will be available in the fall of 2016 after the next administration of the PARCC Assessment.

Student Academic Growth is a measurement of students advancing from one performance level on the ISAT to another performance level (or “growing”) from one year to the next. Unlike test scores, which only show a one-time snapshot of students’ achievement, Student Academic Growth compares students’ achievement from one year to the next to measure improvements over time.

This bar graph shows the average academic growth in Reading and Mathematics by students in this school, Charter Management Organization (CMO), district, and the state. The measure is computed for all students based on their performance on state tests and represents the average growth that students are making each year. This growth measure is expressed as a number between 0 and 200 where a value above 100 represents positive growth and/or consistently high achievement, and a value below 100 represents negative growth and/or consistently low achievement. You may change the data year you are viewing by using the drop down menu in the upper right.

Click on “View Details” to see the value table which provides the basis for calculating annual academic growth in this school.

Refer to information above the graphs.

Refer to information above the graphs.

Using growth measures, in addition to standardized test scores, offers a more complete approach to understanding student performance than relying on test scores alone. Since the use of “Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)”as defined under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) only reflects how schools and districts perform at one point in time, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) has decided to introduce a growth measure to the school accountability framework.

To measure student achievement growth for schools and districts, Illinois uses a value table model. Student growth is determined by the performance of the students within a school or district from one year to the next year. The amount of growth is then assigned a set value based on the value table. (For the explanation of how growth values are assigned, see the section on “Calculating the Student Academic Growth Value” by clicking View Details).

All of the students’ scores, in a given schoo,l are added together and divided by the total number of students in the school to obtain an average growth metric. The same process applies to the district growth metric with all of the students’ scores for the district averaged to obtain the growth metric.